Anne had already buried more children than most mothers ever hold, and now she stood in the presence of another death. The year was 1700, and her only living child, eleven-year-old Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, lay in bed at Windsor, his small body wracked with fever. Just a week earlier he had danced for much of the night at his birthday party, a rare moment of joy for a family that had known almost nothing but loss. Now his throat was sore, chills gripped him, and a headache had blossomed into a raging fever.

Anne and her husband George of Denmark watched helplessly as their son’s health plummeted. Just after midnight on July 30th, 1700, the boy expired, with his devastated parents by his side. The cause was likely smallpox, or perhaps bacterial meningitis. But the experts who later studied the case believed it hardly mattered: the boy had suffered from hydrocephalus since birth, and most likely would have perished eventually anyway.

The one child who had survived out of nearly twenty pregnancies was gone, and the succession of the English throne now hung by a thread. George of Denmark had never expected to find himself in this position. When he was born in 1653 in Copenhagen, the youngest son of King Frederick III of Denmark, there was little to suggest he would ever have anything to do with the English throne. His mother came from a line of German dukes, and when his brother Christian V took the Danish throne while George was still a teenager, the young prince seemed destined to languish as second-rate royalty.

But fate had other plans. The biggest thing recommending George to England was his Protestant faith. The country, once religiously unstable, was moving further toward Protestantism under King Charles II, and Charles was eyeing George as a suitable husband for his niece, Lady Anne, also a Protestant. Even the idea of this match contained scandal.

The marriage negotiations between George and Anne were conducted as a state secret, with Anne’s uncle the Earl of Rochester and one of the English secretaries of state corresponding with the Danish government in utmost confidence to keep any information from leaking to the Dutch. But in 1683, the secret had to come out. George married Anne in the summer of that year at St. James’s Palace in London.

The couple got along well, and their relationship soon flourished into one of love and mutual admiration. It was no surprise when Anne became pregnant just a few months after the wedding. With the English royal family somewhat lacking in heirs, everyone looked on the pregnancy with bated breath. They would let that breath out into a sob: the spring after their wedding, Anne gave birth to a stillborn girl.

It was a heavy blow, but not out of the ordinary for the time. George and Anne bounced back so well that Anne was pregnant the next year, giving birth to a daughter, Mary. They had another daughter, Sophia, the year after. Anne was pregnant again soon after, but this was just the buildup before it all crashed down.

In 1687, horror came to the royal family. Both George and his two girls caught smallpox. The stress for Anne, who had already lived through her own infection and witnessed her loved ones perish years earlier, was immense. Before long, it triggered a miscarriage, with more tragedy on the way.

Although George made it through the illness, his two baby girls did not. In a matter of days, his small and growing family had been whittled down to almost nothing. As one courtier related, they had taken the deaths very heavily. Amidst their bereavement, George’s surroundings were also full of danger.

In 1685, just after little Mary’s birth, King Charles II had passed, and the crown went to Anne’s father, now King James II of England. As the daughter and son-in-law of a king, Anne and George’s profile was raised. But it also put them in the middle of a power struggle that would bring down the throne. There was one thing seriously wrong with James becoming king: although his daughters Mary and Anne were Protestant, he had converted to Catholicism decades before, at first in secret, but he now openly avowed his faith.

For many of James’s advisers, not to mention his family, this was an uncomfortable choice, one that could set back peace by centuries. Nobody in Parliament was happy. Then suddenly, George and Anne’s public and private lives collided. Just after miscarrying and losing their daughters to smallpox, Anne was pregnant again.

At the end of 1687, she gave birth to a stillborn son. But just as she and George grieved for another lost child, alarming news came from another quarter. In early November 1688, Prince George received word that must have made his blood run cold. A Danish envoy informed him that his disgruntled brother-in-law, William of Orange, outraged at the papism running rampant at the royal court, was preparing to invade England in what would become known as the Glorious Revolution.

George’s response was surprising. He liked to exclude himself from politicking, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t understand his surroundings or think on his feet. He told the envoy that since King James’s army was as discontented with their king as everyone else, he would never take official command under the monarch. At the same time, George wasn’t ready to turn traitor and decided to serve as a volunteer.

It was a masterful high-wire act, and George would have to become even more agile. He accompanied the king’s troops as they faced William’s invasion, ready to defend the throne in full glory. But as the days wore on, all he began to see around him was defection. George, who apparently still had some hope left for King James, Catholic or not, reportedly cried out, “Est-il possible?

Is it possible? ” after every turncoat—until, that is, he became one himself. On November 24th, 1688, just bare weeks after the invasion started, George finally threw in his lot with William of Orange. His act left a vicious mark.

King James reportedly sneered, “So Est-il possible is gone, too. ” And although James downplayed George’s defection in his later memoirs, witnesses could see just how much it affected him. It should have. For when the cordial Prince George abandoned him, it was the beginning of the end.

In December, King James II fled to France, giving up his crown to his daughter Mary and his bellicose son-in-law, William. Though he never stopped hoping to get it back, what was done was done. The next year, William and Mary became joint monarchs. As the pair had no children, George’s wife Anne became heir presumptive.

A revolution, a wife next in line for the crown—it was certainly not the life George had signed up for when he came to England. And no peace was to come. In the following years, William had to constantly defend his crown from the old King James and his supporters, the so-called Jacobites. George wanted in on the action.

Paying his own way, he followed William’s troops, only for William to deny him a place in the command. While William may have simply mistrusted George’s battle acumen, his next snub was impossible to ignore. Not content to merely keep Prince George from power, William also kept him from his presence, refusing to let George even travel in his coach while on campaign. William also reportedly instructed his Dutch guards to never salute Prince George if they ever saw him, completing the humiliation.

But there was a final straw. Prince George was a lover, not a fighter. In response to William’s ego trip about the army, George did the sensible thing and tried to join the Navy instead. It was no good.

William took his absolute power very seriously and kept George from the water as well. Defeated, George and Anne retreated from William and Mary’s court. But they had an ace up their sleeve. In the summer of 1689, a miracle happened: Anne finally gave birth to a healthy boy, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester.

With King William and Queen Mary still childless, it was the little prince who carried all the hopes for Protestantism and the Glorious Revolution. Though still on the fringes of the court, Anne and George got a serious upgrade in the eyes of the government. But there was something seriously wrong. Just before Prince William’s birth, Anne had suffered yet another miscarriage, bringing her total to eighteen pregnancies with no children to show for it.

So she and George must have been overjoyed when their breathing baby boy came into the world at Hampton Court Palace—and terrified when they saw how sickly he was. At three weeks old, George’s son began experiencing horrible convulsions. As far as historians can tell, the heir had contracted meningitis during his birth, which had triggered the convulsions. More than that, this same meningitis also likely gave the little prince hydrocephalus, where spinal fluid builds up in the brain, increases the pressure on the skull, and can swell the head.

All in all, Prince William was not an heir to hang a dynasty on, and so George and Anne continued trying to have more children. Trying and failing. As their son grew up, Anne was almost continually pregnant and continually bereaved. They lost a premature daughter in 1690, an infant son in 1692, and Anne gave birth to a stillborn girl in 1693 before having a miscarriage in 1694.

Four more pregnancies from Anne, and George was still the father of one sickly boy. Even so, Prince William would outlive one of his adult relatives. Sickly or not, the young son did bring George and Anne closer to King William and Queen Mary over the years. Tragedy struck anyway.

In 1694, smallpox came back with a vengeance and carried away Mary, causing England to lose its queen and Anne to lose her sister. It wasn’t the only consequence. With Mary’s line locked out of the succession, Anne went from heir presumptive to heir apparent, almost guaranteeing her the crown. Before she could get to the throne, she and her husband would suffer unimaginable pain.

With Mary gone and King William aging, it was never more important that George and Anne produce children. Their desperation was clear, and their misfortune turned exponential. George watched as Anne became pregnant twice and miscarried twice in 1696, and then witnessed the very same thing happen the next year. Possibly two of those miscarriages were of twins.

Hearts plainly breaking, they kept going. In total, Anne would have at least seventeen pregnancies, with only one leading to a growing child. But the same year they lost the last baby, George and Anne would lose the last thing they had left. In the summer of 1700, George and his wife were trying to get their spirits up.

Their son Prince William had a birthday party where he danced for much of the night. It went sideways. Suddenly fatigued from the physical strain, William took to his bed, where he began to experience a sore throat, chills, and then a headache and fever. There was no coming back.

Prince William’s health plummeted until he expired just after midnight on July 30th, 1700, just a week after his eleventh birthday, with his devastated parents by his side. The young heir likely fell victim to yet again smallpox or else bacterial meningitis. Perhaps saddest of all, the culprit is somewhat immaterial: most experts believe he would have perished eventually anyway due to the complications from his hydrocephalus. This hardly could have comforted Prince George and his wife.

George and Anne were overwhelmed with grief, but they didn’t have the luxury of processing their emotions. The monarchy was now in a crisis. In 1702, George’s brother-in-law, William of Orange, died at the age of fifty-one after a bout of pneumonia, turning Anne into Queen Anne and George into her consort. It was a long time coming and also nothing either of them particularly relished.

George was forty-nine years old and Anne thirty-seven, and both of them were dragging around a lifetime of grief with little prospect of a royal legacy. But they did get some payback. George had spent much of his time in the English court on the outside looking in, but his myriad personal tragedies had rightfully eclipsed his concerns for his royal status. Now Anne gave him everything he’d ever asked for.

She made him Generalissimo of the English military and Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy—both quarters William of Orange had never let him touch. Where William of Orange had been an equal, if not a driving force, in his marriage to Anne’s sister Mary, George was happy to sit back and let his wife have all the power during her reign. He followed her lead in voting for policies and, except for the fact that he never converted to the Church of England and maintained his Lutheran faith, he was her man to the core. As historian Anne Somerset put it, almost by accident, George achieved a major advance for feminism.

George had long and quietly suffered from asthma. By 1706, his health was failing rapidly, and on October 28th, 1708, Prince George of Denmark breathed his last. George’s power over his wife only increased in death. One courtier described how, having lost so much already, Anne’s sadness was unspeakable, and that she continued kissing him the very moment his breath went out of his body.

Throughout their marriage, George of Denmark and Queen Anne suffered eighteen devastating pregnancy losses and the death of their young son. At the time, doctors offered various interpretations for what was plaguing them, but none could truly explain or solve it. Finally, years later, modern historians now believe they know the disturbing cause that silently haunted the royal couple for decades. Perhaps the most likely cause is the autoimmune condition lupus, which can cause painful physical symptoms.

Others believe that Queen Anne could have suffered from the lesser-known autoimmune disorder antiphospholipid syndrome, which is often marked by miscarriages. Prince George of Denmark only deserves his reputation as a footnote in history if you’re not looking closely enough. Neither as flashy nor as feisty as his predecessor, King William III, his life was nonetheless heavy with scandal, revolution, and a dynasty in its last gasps. And for that alone, he’s worthy of study.

But if, as Winston Churchill said of him in the 1930s, George married very little except to Anne, well—especially given all they endured—isn’t that enough?